National Best Seller - Named a Best Book of the Year by: New York Times , Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Vogue, The Atlantic, Newsday "A novel of head-snapping ambition and heart-stopping power-a novel that attests to its young author's boundless and unflagging talents." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times New York City, 1976. Meet Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city's great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown's punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor-and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year's Eve.The mystery, as it reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power, will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever.City on Fire is an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about art and truth and rock 'n' roll: about what people need from each other in order to live . . . and about what makes the living worth doing in the first place.From the Hardcover edition.

Rezension

'" City on Fire , by Garth Risk Hallberg: Dickensian, massively entertaining, as close to a great American novel as this century has produced." -Stephen King"The year's most exciting fiction debut . . . A book that is truly that great, rare thing: a wholly inhabitable universe, reflecting back our lives while also offering an exhilarating escape from them." - Rolling Stone " City on Fire is a spectacular debut." -Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven " City on Fire is a big, stunning first novel and an amazing virtual reality machine, whisking us back to New York City in the 1970s with bravura swagger and style and heart . . . The ghosts of New York memorialized by earlier writers-F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Richard Price-hover over City on Fire. At the same time, the novel's ambition and Dickensian storytelling ardor will remind many readers of Donna Tartt's dazzling The Goldfinch , while its fuel-injected prose and nimble stacking of plot complications will recall for others Martin Amis's classic portrait of Gotham in Money. But this novel is defiantly and indelibly Hallberg's own: a symphonic epic that reaches a crashing crescendo during the blackout of July 13, 1977 . . . [In] Hallberg's XXL tool kit as a storyteller: a love of language and the handsprings he can make it perform; a bone-deep knowledge of his characters' inner lives that's as unerring as that of the young Salinger; an instinctive gift for spinning suspense. He also possesses a journalistic eye for those telling details that can trigger memories of the reader's own like small Proustian grenades . . . A novel of head-snapping ambition and heart-stopping power-a novel that attests to its young author's boundless and unflagging talents." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "Dazzling . . . City on Fire is an extraordinary performance . . . Hallberg inhabits the minds of whites and blacks, men and women, old and young, gay and straight with equal fidelity . . . making every one of them thrum with real life . . . And what endlessly fascinating characters they are! . . . [The novel's] Whitmanesque arms embrace an entire city of lovers and strivers, saints and killers." - Ron Charles, Washington Post "A singular achievement . . . The story engages from the first page." - Entertainment Weekly "An uncommon pleasure . . . It's easy to understand the excitement. City on Fire is an epic and absorbing novel." - USA Today "Profoundly illuminating . . . Timeless . . . Hallberg ties these characters' fates together with an artful intricacy that is truly remarkable." - Seattle Times "A probing look at New York City in the mid-1970s. The plot winds and twists through just about every corner of the city . . . And all this amid the blinding light of love, in a great midsummer blackout ." -Scott Simon, NPR/Weekend Edition"Locating the best of times within the worst of times is no mean trick, especially in a historical novel where the history is recent enough that many readers remember firsthand just how bad those times were. That's the delicate and ultimately moving balancing act that Garth Risk Hallberg pulls off in City on Fire . . . His talent is as conspicuous as the book's heft. There's rarely a less than finely honed sentence or a moment when you don't feel that a sophisticated intelligence is at work . . . [The climax] is a tour de force." - Frank Rich, New York Times Book Review "Spectacular . . . New York City in the 1970s comes pulsingly alive . . . The book clearly reflects the work of an exciting new talent." - People " City on Fire is a novel of connection, forgiveness, and empathy . . . Skillfully drawn and beautifully shaded." -A.O. Scott, GQ"Captivating . . . It's immediately apparent that this is a writer who knows how to do suspense. You're soon zipping through Hallberg's vividly realized New York like a child discovering H